Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"A very few–very few–isolated locations around the world, where it was possible to impose a rigid quarantine and where authorities did so ruthlessly, escaped the disease entirely. American Samoa was one such place. There not single person died of influenza.

Across a few miles of ocean lay western Samoa, seized from Germany by New Zealand at the start of the war. On September 30, 1918, its population was 38,302, before the steamer Talune brought the disease to the island. A few months later, the population was 29,802. Twenty-two percent of of the population died." – John M. Barry, The Great Influenza



Notes from JWR:

Today, I’m introducing a new SurvivalBlog feature column: “Weekly Survival Real Estate Market Update. This will include general market news, details on recommended retreat locales, and much more. I plan to post it each Friday. It will either be written by Todd Savage (“TS”), or by me (“JWR”.)

SurvivalBlog reader Thad L. recently asked me: “How would you describe your novel? I don’t like most books but I like Tom Clancy novels. Is it that sort of novel?”
My novel “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse” is a fast-paced novel, and it does have some “techno-thriller” elements. I did my best to weave a lot of practical and tactical information into the storyline. To illustrate, the following is an excerpt from one of the later chapters in the novel (Chapter 23: Vicissitude) that shows the writing style:



Book Excerpt–Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse

Geographically distinct units were formed from the Northwest Militia, as planned, late in the April of the fifth year. To avoid confusion amongst the local citizenry that they protected, they designated those at the original retreat as “Todd Gray’s Company” and those at Kevin Lendel’s house as “Michael Nelson’s Company.” The responsibility for patrolling was divided along a line east-west between the retreats.
Todd Gray’s Company was to patrol the northern half of the sector, while Michael Nelson’s Company patrolled the southern half. Separate CB channels were assigned to each Company for locals to use to contact either Company.

On the 5th of May, Mary was in the garden plot transplanting some young tomato plants that had been started in the greenhouse a few weeks earlier. As she was methodically digging holes for each of the plants, she heard a strange engine noise in the distance. Just moments after she first heard the noise, she was astonished to look up and see two light aircraft approaching from the south. She dropped her trowel, snatched up her AR-15, and ran to the house. By the time she was in the house, the Mallory Sonalerts were wailing, and everyone at the house was at their “stand-to” positions, scanning their assigned sectors of fire.
“Does anybody have any idea where those planes came from?” Mary asked. Sitting at the C.Q. desk, Jeff shrugged his shoulders, and reached over to turn off the “panic button”, silencing the piercing alarm.

The engine noise was clearly louder now. From the LP/OP, Terry called in on the TA-1: “They’re pusher prop jobs, twin seat, tandem style. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like there’s just one pilot in each. They’re definitely circling us. Everybody stay put.” The planes circled the house a second time, just a hundred yards above the ground.
From the front of the house, Todd declared: “Hey, wait a minute, it looks like they’re getting ready to land. Yep, they are landing down on the county road.” The two planes landed in rapid succession on the straight stretch of county road below the house. Todd was surprised by how short a distance it took for the planes to land and come to a full stop. The planes looked identical, except for their color. One was painted dark green. The other was tan. He heard their engines roar up in tempo as the planes turned and taxied back to the front gate. The planes came to a stop at the front gate, and their engines shut down.
Both pilots lifted their canopies and took off their headphones, almost in unison. Two figures, one tall and one short, hopped out of the planes, wearing BDUs and tan boots.
Todd shouted loud enough for everyone at the house to hear: “They are painted drab, but those sure don’t look military. Have any of you heard of anyone in the area that owns an ultralight?” There was no reply. Todd pondered for a moment. “Hey, you know, Dan told me that Ian Doyle was in an ultralight club.
I sure wish Fong was still here. He’s probably seen pictures of Ian’s plane. He said that it was a zippy little thing, and I think he said that it was a two-seater.”
“Who is this Ian fellow?,” Rose asked.
Mary answered, “An old college buddy of Todd and Dan’s. He has a wife and daughter. That might be him in one of those planes down on the road.”

Ten minutes later, after a cautious squad-sized approach by the bounding overwatch method, Todd and Ian Doyle were sharing hugs. “Wow! Long time no see. What brings you here?”
“It’s a long story, Todd. Suffice it to say that we left town in a hurry when a very large number of muy malo hombres took over. It was muy peligroso there. So we did some Van-dammage–just to whittle them down, you understand–and then we took off. It took a few inquiries in Bovill, but we found your place here easily enough.”
Todd took a long look at the plane behind Doyle, staring at just below the wing root, where it was stenciled EXPERIMENTAL. He said insistently, “You can tell me the whole story later. First tell me about these ultralights. They are really a sight to behold.”
Ian turned to caress the fuselage of the flat forest green-painted plane behind him. “To begin with, technically, they aren’t ultralights, although they use a lot of the same design features. Legally, these birds are classed as light experimentals. These birds are both Laron Star Streaks. I paid just under $30K for mine, when I picked it up new from the factory in Borger, Texas, back in ‘98. We towed it home in it’s trailer behind our Suburban. The Star Streak comes with a lot of standard goodies like dual controls, an ICOM radio, electric start, electric brakes, three position half span flaps, electric trim, and a pretty complete set of VFR instruments. I added a GPS navigation box and active noise reduction headphones to this one. It’s essentially a poor man’s general aviation plane, but legally it’s a light ‘experimental’. But it’s too heavy to be classed as an “ultralight” under the FAA regs.”
“With its enclosed canopy, it’s one of the best light experimentals for long range flying. In fact, one guy flew a similar model Laron from London to Beijing and wrote a book about it. As I’m sure you know, the main advantages of ultralights and light experimentals is that they are so thrifty on gas, and have a super short take-off roll–usually under 200 feet–and very low stall speeds. The Star Streak only weighs about 400 pounds, empty. The other neat thing about our Larons and most similar light experimentals and ultralights is that they are not restricted to av-gas. In ours here, for example, you can burn any grade of gas down to about 85 octane. If I adjusted the carb jets, I suppose they would even burn ethanol or methanol. Luckily, I haven’t had to try that yet.”
Doyle turned to the trim woman with an olive complexion standing beside him. She appeared to be around 35 years old. “I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. This is my wife Blanca. I’ve written to you about her, but we haven’t seen each other face to face since college, so you’ve never had a chance to meet.”
The attractive woman in BDUs extended her hand, and Todd shook it firmly. Gray said quietly, “Encantado.” She replied in a soft accent, “A pleasure finally meeting you, Meester Gray.”
“As you probably recall from my e-mail, I met Blanca when I was stationed down in Hondo,” Doyle continued. “That was back in my ‘Terry and the Pirates’ days, when I was a lieutenant–not too long out of transition training. She was a civilian working in flight ops at Tegucigalpa. Blanca was already a qualified single engine pilot when I met her. Talk about love at first sight, eh conchita?” Blanca smiled and blushed, nodding her chin to her shoulder.
Gesturing to the other plane, Ian said, “We swapped for Blanca’s Laron just after the stock market tanked. I got it from an old fart civilian who was in the Phoenix Metro ultralight club. He bought this one as a kit. He said that it took him almost two years to build it in his spare time. He finished building it in ‘99. It had very low hours clocked on the engine. His was stored in the same style enclosed trailer that we had for mine. I traded him my Sten gun, a suppressor with nomex cover, a whole bunch of magazines, and 1,000 rounds of nine millimeter ball for it. Fair enough swap, I suppose, since unregistered and suppressed submachineguns don’t grow on trees. We could both see the handwriting on the wall by then. He knew what I needed, and I knew what he needed: I needed some more transportation, and he needed some more firepower. I asked him why he wasn’t planning to bail out of Phoenix. He said that his wife refused to budge an inch. They had their whole life wrapped up in their house. Since he was stuck there, he didn’t need the plane, but he certainly needed a serious self-defense gun.”
Doyle stepped toward the back of the fuselage, deftly ducking under the wing, and went on: “The Star Streaks cruise at just over 120 miles an hour at 80 percent power, which is pretty fast for a light experimental. Of course, that seems like crawling when you are used to wearing an F-16, but I like ‘em. The cockpit layout is even similar to a Falcon. Not exactly fly-by-wire controls, though. This model uses a 85 horse Hirth F-30 engine. It’s a great little plant. It just hums along and sips gas–only about five gallons an hour at 80% power. Both of these planes are identical except for the propellers. Mine uses a four blade composite, but the prop on Blanca’s is the older composite three blade. The Hirth is a powerful little engine. It will make the Larons climb at 2,500 feet per minute when it is in normal configuration with just one man on board, but of course a lot slower the way we have them loaded down right now. The planes have a rated useful load of 500 pounds. I’m afraid that we exceeded that limit when we took off from Prescott. Between the heavy load and the high elevation of the airport, our takeoff distances were outrageously long–at least, that is, for a light experimental. But luckily, we had a long straight stretch of road to take off from.”
Blanca looked around anxiously. “Ees there anywhere where we can put theeese birds where they whon’t get stolen?”
Mary answered, “We’ll put them both in the Andersen’s big hay barn, just down the road. It’s a nice dry barn. The wings should hopefully fit through the front. It was left open on that side to let the big New Holland harvester in. It’s a three-sided affair. The farm is deserted, and the barn is almost empty now. They gave us permission to use the place. Don’t worry–when the planes are pushed to the back of the barn, no one will see them there. And, as further insurance, it’s just within line of sight of our LP/OP, up on the hill.”
“Ell-Pee-Oh-Pee?”, Blanca asked, quizzically.
“Sorry, Blanca. I’m afraid that we are used to talking in ‘acronese’ around here, and not the Air Force acronym dialect you’re probably used to. LP/OP is a ground pounder acronym for listening post/observation post.” Pointing to the nearby hill, Mary explained, “Basically it’s a glorified hole in the ground. If you look very closely, you can see it up on the hill there. It has a good view of the area. It’s for observation in daylight, and for listening at night.”
Moving the planes into the barn took only a few minutes. They were able to taxi the planes under power to within 20 feet of the barn. From there, they were pushed in by hand. Going in, the planes’ 30 foot long wingspans cleared the entrance with just a foot to spare on each side. As they were pushing the first plane in, Mary asked, “How many gas cans have you got in there, and how far can you fly without refueling?”
Doyle pointed through the canopy at the rear seat area, and cited, “Originally, the Star Streaks only had a range of around 320 miles at 80% power. The main tank is 14 and-a-half gallons. But I added some big bladder tanks to both planes. They aren’t connected directly to the primary fuel system. I cheated and installed a couple of little Black and Decker Jackrabbit hand pumps along side the front seats, with extra long hoses. To transfer fuel from the bladder to the main tank, you just put the Jackrabbit in your lap and crank away. The bladder tanks extend our range to about 480 miles without landing to refuel, when we are at max takeoff weight. If we were in a light configuration, they could maybe even go 550 miles.”
Ian’s plane came to a rest with the tip of its nose less than a foot from the rear wall of the barn. He inched past the nose and walked around to the other side of the plane, talking as he walked. “They are both quite a bit lighter right now, since we have less gas and we had to barter some of our stuff for fuel.” He tapped on the Plexiglas with his index finger and said, “I have these five gallon gas cans strapped into the back seats of both birds, but they are nearly empty, too. Aside from some clothes, sleeping bags, tools, and aeronautical charts; most of the weight on board is fuel, oil, guns, ammo, water, and MREs. You know, just the essentials in life. At present we’re down to less than 8 gallons of fuel between the two planes…”
Mary interjected, “Don’t worry about that. We still have over four hundred gallons of stabilized unleaded premium in the tank here. It will only be good for another year or two, so we might as well use it up. I think that it’s 92 octane, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Terry–she’s our logistics honcho. But she’s up at the LP/OP right now.”
After they had pushed the second plane in, Todd declared, “Don’t worry about all your gear, we’ll come down with the pickup truck later this afternoon and take it up to the house.”
Before they left the planes, Doyle used a socket wrench to remove the nose wheels from both planes, and buried them under some loose hay near the front of the big barn. “They won’t be going far without these,” he said. As they walked out of the barn, Ian slung his suppressed MAC-10 over his shoulder. Blanca did likewise with a stainless steel folding-stock Mini-14 GB. Todd was disappointed to see that they didn’t carry any extra magazines. He made a mental note to correct that glaring deficiency.
As they walked, Blanca was bemused at the way the militia members walked at 5 yard intervals. “Why are you walking so far apart?,” she asked with a laugh.
“Force of habit,” Mary explained. “In case of an ambush, you are at much greater risk if you are bunched together.”
They chatted amiably as they hiked back to the Gray’s house. Once they were inside, Rose served up an early lunch of raw carrots, apple slices spread with reconstituted peanut butter, and freshly baked bread. It was over lunch that Ian and Blanca started to recount their story. Mary set a TRC-500 to the “VOX” setting, so that Terry Layton, who was still up at the LP/OP, didn’t feel left out.
Munching on some bread, Ian began, “The 56th Fighter Wing had just started a rotation to Saudi. It was just two years before the Crash that we switched back from a tactical training wing to a tactical fighter wing. I came on board just a few months into the transition. Anyway, when all the trouble started, since I was the wing maintenance officer, I was stuck back at Luke, catching up on paperwork. I was also taking a idiotic mandatory ‘Diversity, Sensitivity, and Sexual Harassment’ class. The frickin’ class lasted a whole week. I had orders to catch up with the wing in late November. But then, when the riots got going in earnest, they planned an emergency redeployment of virtually all of the close air support aircraft in the Air Force inventory back to the States. Some weenie at the White House must have dreamed that one up. Our wing was going to deploy to Hurlburt Field, down in Florida. Criminy! Could you imagine F-16s and A-10s versus rioters? Talk about over-kill! I never heard what happened to our squadrons after that. I was too busy with problems of my own–like finding drinking water for Blanca and myself.”
“And your daughter?,” Mary asked.
Doyle’s face clouded with emotion. Stiffening, he replied, “Linda didn’t make it, ma’am. She died five years ago. She was in Detroit, doing her annual six week long ‘Grandmom and Grandpop’ visit with my folks. It was the first time that she was old enough to go on a commercial plane by herself. Blanca wanted to stay home to relax, do some pastels, and a bit of surfing the Internet. We were home-schooling her, so Linda wasn’t on a normal school year schedule. Blanca and Linda liked to go up to Michigan in the Fall. They get some nice Fall colors up there.”
Ian paused and looked at the ground. “By the time we realized the magnitude of the situation, most of the flights had been canceled, and the few that were still flying were booked solid. In retrospect, what I should have done was played “you bet your bars” and commandeered a D-model Falcon to zip up there to get her. Instead, I took the conservative route and just hoped that the riots wouldn’t last long or spread outside the downtown area of Detroit. I also figured that if worse came to worse, my dad’s gun collection could handle any rioters that came down their block. I was wrong. I got a call from one of their close neighbors who managed to make it out of Detroit alive. She said that looters got really pissed when my dad shot some of them. They torched my dad’s house. Killed them all. I still feel like such a fool. I could have saved my folks and my daughter’s life.”
Blanca squeezed Ian’s hand and said softly, “Don’t do thees, E-an. We can-no change history.”
Mary’s eyes were wet with tears. “I’m so sorry, Ian. I’m so sorry, Blanca. ”
Doyle shook his head from side to side and muttered, “Dwelling on it won’t do any good. In times like these, you just have to suck it up and drive on.”
Todd said a silent prayer. Then he looked up and asked, “So what happened to everybody at Luke?”
Doyle snapped out of his reverie and recounted, “To call it mass desertion would be to put it mildly. The mess halls only had limited food supplies, and we only had enough MREs on hand for short-term contingencies. I’m sure some of the overseas air bases had better stocks, but nobody ever expected a disruption of re-supply of food in CONUS! When it became clear that the food wasn’t going to last long, virtually everybody started to disappear. And when they went, they took a lot of equipment, fuel, and nearly every scrap of food on base with them. The Base Exchange, the commissary, and the mess halls were stripped clean. When I say everybody, I mean everybody. There wasn’t a soul from 56th Log or 56th Medical left on base. Even the whole Support Group basically vanished in about three days time. By the time I decided to pack it in, Luke was a ghost town. There were only seven pilots and about 20 ground crew guys left on the post. Most of them were young bachelors. By that point, I was the senior ranking officer on the base, so I could do pretty much anything I wanted. I was the de facto base commander. I just called a formation and released the remaining personnel on base on ‘indefinite leave.’
Unfortunately, my options were pretty limited. You see, there wasn’t a single aircraft left on the ramp, or a single military vehicle left on post. By then, there were just a few POVs. Even the fuel trucks had disappeared. Now you’ve got to understand that they had 217 birds on the property books, mainly F-16 Cs and D models. Of those, they were all either out on the Saudi Arabia rotation, or off on “emergency” flights that all mysteriously ended up being one-way missions. At least three F-16s, and the general staff Lear were out-and-out stolen. No flight plans were filed. The guys who took them just figured that they could get away with it. They just taxied out at O-dark-early and took off. And there was nobody left in the tower to say ‘boo’ about it. Those four had been the last airworthy planes on the base. The few planes that were left were just some stripped hangar queens.”
“After that ‘gentlemen, you are released’ speech, I spent the rest of that day looking for fuel containers. Every gas can available had already walked off base. The only good sized containers I could find were some hydraulic fluid drums. But I was afraid that the fluid left in them would contaminate the gas. So I ended up scrounging a bunch of empty 2 liter pop bottles from dumpsters around the BX. I drove home that evening with almost 140 gallons of av gas in the back of the Suburban. I never went back to Luke after that.
We were living off base in a rental flat-top in Buckeye. It’s basically a retirement community. When I got home, I talked things over with Blanca. We decided to hang tight for a few days. We packed up, but packed light. It was like one of those life boat games–’Now if you could only take five items, which five would they be?’ The end result was that Blanca and I had to leave a lot behind. We spent a lot of that time listening to the radio for reports on the rioting. Only a couple of AM stations were on the air by then, and the news they were handing out was pretty sketchy. None of it sounded good. They spent half the time repeating the same FEMA ‘Stay calm, remain in your homes, order will be restored shortly’ tape. What a pile of bull. The tape even recommend calling 911 if we saw any looting in progress. I laughed and said, ‘Oh yes sir, will do.’ The phones had all been dead for several days.”
“Our next-door neighbors had a police scanner. That was the best thing for monitoring where there was trouble happening. This was at the time when Phoenix and Tucson were burning down. Major chaos, let me tell ya. Once the looting started spreading out into the suburbs, we agreed that it would be bad news to stay in the Phoenix area much longer. Bright and early on a Tuesday morning, we wheeled the Larons out of their trailers, and bolted on the wings and tails, right there on our front lawn. It only took about fifteen minutes each to assemble and pre-flight them, since we’d had plenty of practice before, putting my bird together for weekend jaunts.”
“While we were loading our gear, most of the neighbors just stood there and gawked. A few helped out with the fueling process. We handed our next-door neighbors the keys and title to our Suburban, and the keys to the house. I told them that anything inside was free for the taking. By then, we knew that we weren’t ever coming back. Then we taxied off the lawn, down the driveway, and out the court. We hung a left, throttled up, and took off from Hastings Avenue. Some of the neighbors stood at the ends to block car traffic for us. Must have been quite a sight for the retirees. We flew from there straight to Prescott–that’s in northern Arizona. We planned to stay at my cousin’s place.”
“My cousin Alex was a senior salesman with J&G Sales, a big gun distributor up in Prescott. With that job, I figured that he would be pretty well squared away, at least in terms of guns and ammo to barter for anything he could possibly want. Prescott is partly a resort community, and kind of a haven for gun nuts. J&G was there, Ruger had a factory there, and there were lots of custom gun makers, barrel makers, and stock makers. One little outfit there made elephant guns on custom magnum Mauser actions before the Crash. Big .416 Rigbys and that sort of thing. The last I saw of them, they were still producing some smaller caliber long range guns in H-S Precision Kevlar-Graphite stocks. They sold them on a barter basis. Real tack drivers.”
“Prescott is not a big town, but it took us a while to locate Alex, since the phones were out there by that time, too. I hitched a ride from the airport, while Blanca stayed behind to guard the planes. From talking with Alex’s neighbors, we discovered that he had hired out as a security man for some Tucson banking fat-cats. They had a pretty elaborate hidey hole set up just north of Prescott. There were four families living at the compound. At first they didn’t want to take us in. Then they saw the firepower that we had with us, and they changed their minds. Officially, we were “security”, just like my cousin. We had it pretty soft there, compared to most folks. We had plenty of water, and enough food to get by. We were in no hurry to leave.”
“Things were pretty quiet there for four full years. A little local trouble, but nothing worth mentioning. Then we started hearing about this gang of escaped convicts and assorted riff-raff that was slowly working its way up from New Mexico. Refugees told us that it was originally two gangs that combined into one big super gang. They would hit a town, linger a week or two, strip it clean, and then move on to the next one. They were like a swarm of locusts. There were over 300 of them by the time they made it up to the Prescott area. Rumor had it that at least one of the two gangs had been doing this town-to-town hopping all the way from south Texas. By then they were getting pretty good at it.”
“I took a recon flight in my Star Streak down to Wickenburg when they hit there, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. They just swept through the town in one big mass of vehicles. Many of the houses were abandoned, ‘cause folks had heard they were coming and didn’t want to be around when they did. Basically, they burned down any house that anyone was shooting from. Then they went from house to house, taking anything of value. Even from the air, I could see them dragging some women out of houses and raping them on the sidewalks. We’re talking total scum of the Earth. It made me wish I was flying a fully armed Fighting Falcon instead of my little Laron. I could have really kicked some tail. These guys were absolute savages, Todd.” Doyle stopped for a few moments, and then added, “I got shot at some when I was on that flight, but I didn’t find any bullet holes in my bird when I got back.”
“Just three weeks ago, the gang was making their way up the Agua Fria, and hit the little town of Mayer. About 80 of us from town, mainly men, went on a little preemptive strike when we heard that the gang had moved into the town of Humboldt. Blanca, Alex, and I were all on the raiding party. We knew that Prescott would be next, because we were just 12 miles up the road. A Navajo kid about 13 years old, who escaped from Humboldt just after they arrived, gave us the layout. He even volunteered to go back in to town to scout which buildings the looters were in. That was a real help in planning the operation.”
“Our little raid didn’t have much in the way of military precision, but we sure did some damage. We knew that we couldn’t kill them all, so we decided that the thing to do was to concentrate on their vehicles, especially their armored cars and APCs. We hit them at just after three in the morning. Since we were all on foot or horseback the last two miles in, they didn’t know we were coming until we were already in their midst. They had the buildings that they were occupying lit up like Christmas trees. Our little Navajo scout had told us in advance which buildings they’d be in. We were only fully engaged for about five minutes. It was fast and furious, but like I said before, we did some serious Van-dammage.”
“In the first couple of minutes, we had the advantage, because most of the looters were asleep. They made me the point man, since I had the only suppressed weapon in the raiding party. When I shoot Winchester Q-Loads–those are special low velocity subsonic rounds–this thing doesn’t make much more noise than a loud hand clap.” Doyle held up the stubby Ingram M10 for a brief display, unscrewing the nomex-covered suppressor. “The term ‘silencer’ is really a misnomer. A ‘can’ like this is really just an elaborate sound muffler. Again, you can still hear the shot–sounds like a loud hand-clap. The normal sound is reduced so much that you can even hear the clack of the bolt going forward with each shot.”
Doyle screwed the suppressor back on the M10 and set it down on the window seat. “Sorry, I digress. Getting back to what happened in Humboldt… I got the chance to personally drop three of their sentries, shooting my MAC in the semi-auto mode. I don’t mind saying that it felt real good, after what I’d seen them do in Wickenburg. At first, we were the only ones shooting. Once the looters rolled out of bed and started shooting back, it was another story They had a lot of fully automatic weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers of some sort. They really started hosing us down. Before they did though, we had torched more than 40 vehicles with Molotov cocktails. Apparently, we got every one of their APCs and armored cars.”
“Our retreat out of Humboldt was let’s say ‘less than organized.’ Only 29 of us made it back to Prescott alive by noon. Two more guys straggled in the next evening. Of the 31 that made it back, only three had been wounded, and those were all minor grazing wounds. Oddly enough, all five of the men and women who were on horseback were among those to make it back without a scratch. Not even any of the horses were hit. Either they were real lucky, or cavalry is making a comeback. My cousin Alex never made it back from the Humboldt raid.” Ian skipped a beat, and then went on: “The looters didn’t show up the next day or even the day after. Blanca and I waited at the compound, with the Larons loaded, fueled, and ready to go.”
“Three days after our raid, they came into Prescott, and they must have been plenty pissed. The gang rolled in just after dawn. They didn’t seem to care how many losses they were taking, and they immediately started to torch every building they got to. Blanca and I didn’t wait until they made it to the north side of town. Everyone at the compound was by then either in town manning the barricades, or had headed for the hills. Most of the remaining stuff at the retreat went with two families that had a pair of GMC motor homes. They were headed for Flagstaff.”
“At that point, we realized that discretion was the better part of valor, so we took off, too. We used a nice long straight stretch of road that started a quarter mile north of the compound. I had taken off and landed there many times before during the five years we were there. When we wheeled around after take-off, we could see that almost half the buildings in the downtown area were on fire. We didn’t stick around to see how things ended, but I’m afraid that the looters must have taken the town. Even though they didn’t have any armored vehicles left, they had superior numbers and superior firepower.”



Weekly Survival Real Estate Market Summary

Welcome to the Weekly Survival Real Estate Update. This new column will feature news, statistics, market analysis and opinions. We plan to feature one or two retreat locales each week. Typically, we will report on one locale in the Continental United States and one internationally. Our first full length update will appear next Friday and feature Northwestern Montana and New Zealand, both locales have excellent characteristics and qualities for the retreat shopper.

One quick note this week: The Northern Idaho market seems to now be feeling the combined effects of the real estate market crunch and liquidity crunch. Over the past few weeks there have been major price reductions on large acreage properties, some new listings of retreat-qualified properties–now listed at reasonable market values–and investors trying to dump their rural subdivisions which have just received approval. There are currently 1,141 residential listings and 1,605 vacant land listings in the northern Idaho area (Sandpoint, Priest River and Clark Fork north to Bonners Ferry and Porthill) in an area of about 35,000 people in two counties.
For all of you looking at Northern Idaho the market there is flooded with listings and the time is at hand to cherry pick the retreat of your dreams. The decline (Crunch) here will never be as bad as the coastal locales or big cities due in part to the fact that only 17% of the land here is in private ownership and it drops to 11% in northwestern Montana. This alone may actually cause the decline to stop over the next year, as the demand for retreats increases as city dwellers ‘bail out’ of the nosediving markets. This is especially true with larger acreage homes and land (40+ acres), as sellers get wise to this fact.
All in all, no matter what retreat locale you are considering it looks like everyone is in for a rough ride. Read, study, plan and then investigate some more before making your move. But whatever you do, don’t hesitate. Because, like those battle packs of South African .308 ball ammo, one day you’ll wake up and say “Darn, I knew I should have bought a dozen cases of that stuff while it was still cheap.” Remember, smart people learn from their mistakes, but the wise learn from others’ mistakes!
For more information and analysis of retreats for sale in your locale of choice, please visit SurvivalRealty.com. Locales listed on the site do not have to follow JWR’s list of approved areas in his top 19 western states. If you think that a locale you are interested in moving to has merit, please let us know. We would be happy to contact realtors there, find and approve a few listings, and get them up on the site for you. The more feedback and help we get the better the site will be, so go ahead, have it tailored to feature retreats in your favorite locale. – TS



Odds ‘n Sods:

I heard that the makers of Polar Pure water purifier had a visit from the DEA this week. They have plans to so highly regulate the distribution of iodine crystals that they will soon run the family owned and operated company out of business. (They make just one product.) The DEA said that they will expect retailers to get a photocopy of each buyer’s driver’s license, keep track of the quantities purchased, report “suspicious” purchases (with an as yet-to-be determined threshold) maintain the records for at least two years, and on and on. ll this because iodine has been deemed a “precursor” chemical for the illicit production of methamphetamine (“meth”)..The owner of Polar Pure said that he “tried to negotiate” with the DEA agents, but ” they weren’t in the mood to negotiate.” The bottom line: Rather than jump through the bureaucratic flame-filled hoops, the company will probably just shut down. I strongly recommend that SurvivalBlog readers buy their lifetime supply of Polar Pure as soon as possible, before it is heavily regulated and the new record keeping rules go into effect. You should probably buy at least 3 or 4 bottles per family member. At last count, the folks at Ready Made Resources only had 180 bottles left in stock. Once this is posted, I suspect that their inventory will sell out within just a couple of days. After that, there will be no more.

  o o o

Hardly a Surprise Department: Financial Services job cuts soar on housing woes. We also read of more “difficulties”, a la Countrywide, just as we predicted: Accredited Home Lenders Shuts Down Much of Its Business

  o o o

China to install sensors along NAFTA highway

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Cylindrical wind power generators in development in Australia



Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"We should reserve a storehouse for ourselves, altogether ours, and wholly free, wherein we may hoard up and establish our true liberty." – Montaigne, Essays



Note from JWR:

The high bid is now at $210 in the SurvivalBlog benefit auction for a for a new-in-the-box Hydro Photon UV Light SteriPen Water Sterilization System with solar charger and pre-filter, kindly donated by Safecastle, one of our most loyal advertisers. This very popular water sterilizer product package normally sells for $225, plus postage. See the details on the SteriPen and solar charger here. The auction ends on September 15th. Just e-mail us your bid.



Projecting Some Possible Outcomes for The Panic of 2007-2008

I’m sure that you’ve been reading about the current liquidity crisis. But I’m not sure that the average citizen realizes the full implications. Twenty years ago, borrowed money was a lubricant for the American economy. Now it is the economy. Without credit at all levels–consumer, corporate, and government–America as we know it would cease to exist. We live in what economist Bill Bonner calls The Empire of Debt. Because of the lending crisis, the U.S., economy is teetering on precipice. Writing in his Reality Check e-newsletter this week, Dr. Gary North pointed out: “On August 15, the 90-day T-bill rate was 4.21%. The next day it fell to 3.79%. That was a one-day drop of .42 percentage points. As a percentage, it was a 10% drop. We rarely see 10% moves in one day. The next day, Friday, it was down to 3.76%. On Monday, August 20, it fell to 3.12% . That was another 17% decline. This is not a merely rush for safety. It is bordering on panic.”[Emphasis added.] This crisis can have huge, unforeseen macroeconomic effects.

I think that the term “panic” is a good description for current credit market conditions. In fact, I won’t be surprised if the current credit crisis is someday remembered as The Panic of 2007. Hopefully it won’t be followed by the Depression of 2008 to 2028.

I’ve been asked by several readers for a projected outcome on the current credit crunch. Since no one, not even Helicopter Ben Bernanke can say for certain what will happen, in this article I’m offering a range of potential outcomes. I will also assign a speculative percentage likelihood of each outcome. To assuage the Pollyannas, I will first offer the best case outcome:

1.) Best Case: The Credit Market Staggers Back to Business As Usual

If the recent massive injections liquidity the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are successful at calming credit market fears, and if congress steps up and starts issuing blanket loan guarantees, then perhaps the credit market will recover, and stagger back to some semblance of normalcy. But unless or until that occurs, the credit markets will continue to be petrified by fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). Even in this best case, there will probably be a global recession, while order is restored to the marketplace

As background, let me explain: When in FUD mode, credit does not flow, regardless of low interest rates. Presently, the bankers are beFUDdled: They are reluctant to make loans-to even the heretofore most “credit worthy” corporations because they are uncertain of the true credit worthiness of any borrower that has either primary or secondary (derivative) exposure to sub-prime loan investments. Bankers have a long and worthy history of being risk averse. In situations where one or more risks cannot be fully and properly gauged, their default answer is, was, and always will be, NO. As in: “No, I won’t approve this loan.” The only way that they will get out of FUD mode is if the risk can be either be removed (through loan guarantees), or if risk can be properly gauged, through new accounting practices that reveal underlying risks being borne by the borrower. The latter may be difficult to accomplish, because in the past five years the derivatives market has ballooned to gargantuan proportions. There are many trillions of dollars of derivatives in play, with only some very flaky accounting to back them up.

Even this “Best Case” is not a real solution to the Debt Bubble problem. A speedy return to a credit-driven economy is essentially just forestalling the inevitable. The Powers That Be will only be sowing the seeds for an even bigger, more painful unwinding of debt in another few years. Likelihood for this outcome: 5%

2.) Lower Interest Rates, Then Recession

As previously noted in SurvivalBlog, Ben Bernanke and the Fed Board of Governors are stuck. If they lower rates then they will crack the critical support level for the US Dollar Index, which appears sacred at about 80. And if they raise rates, then it will put Wall Street into a tail spin and possibly plunge the economy into depression. In the short term, the Fed will likely yield to political pressure and continue to lower interest rates. But this will be to the detriment of foreign investment, and inevitably to the value of the US Dollar on the FOREX. So I doubt that the Fed will drop the prime interest rate more than 80 basis points (0.8%), including the recent 50 basis point (0.5%) drop. Any further drop could precipitate a full scale dollar panic–a global flight from the US Dollar. After moving within this narrow range of motion, Bernanke, et al will be truly struck–inextricably stuck. Starving for liquidity, the economy will plunge into a deep recession. This recession could last 2 to 5 years. And there could be some variations on this theme (See 2A, 2B, below.) The stock market will decline at lest 20% and corporate layoffs will be be even larger than in recent recessions. Likelihood for this outcome: 60%.

2A.) Coastal Suburban Real Estate Declines to Desperation Price Levels
Regardless of whether or not Bernanke and company pull off a miracle for the bankers, the coastal suburban real estate market will continue to decline. It was so badly inflated–all with easy money courtesy of “Easy Al” Greenspan and his successor–that it may fall by as much as 60% in some overvalued markets like Palm Beach, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Seattle before the market bottoms. Meanwhile, the price of rural real estate in inland regions will probably remain fairly solid–except for resort areas like Hot Springs Arkansas, Sun Valley, Idaho, Vail, Colorado, and Lake Arrowhead, California.

As the market falls and ARMs reset, some home owners will go to extreme measures to save their McMansions. They will sell off at a loss their second homes (mostly in resort locales), sell off their “spec” and rental houses, their fancy cars, fine art, and various collections. One nice fringe benefit: The price of some guns may actually come down for a while. Consider any good quality gun in a common caliber a good choice for tangible investing.

Not all owners will continue to psychologically latch on to their unaffordable houses. Some owners will simply walk away when they get upside down in their mortgages. This will be compounded by corporate layoffs that force families to relocate to live with relatives and/or to seek work. When they realize that the remaining unpaid mortgage principal is far greater that what they if they sold their house, they will do as the Lord Humongous suggested to Papagallo’s band of survivors: “Just walk away.” A lot of them won’t even bother dropping off their door keys at the bank.

2B.) Sequential or Simultaneous Deflation and Inflation

We might see some real economic oddities in the next few years, as the debt spiral unwinds and people are forced to liquidate some assets at a loss. There might be a wave of deflation followed by mass inflation, or even simultaneous inflation and deflation of some prices, such as:

* Precious Metals Up… and Base (Industrial) Metals Down

* Inland Rural Farms Up… and Coastal Suburban/Resort Houses Down

* Groceries Up… and Timber/Lumber, Yachts, and Fine Art Down

* Disney and Coleman Stock Up… and Home Depot, Microsoft and Most Other Stocks Down

* Pickup Trucks Prices Up… and Sports Car/Luxury Car/Classic Car Prices Down

* Imported Goods Up… and Domestically Manufactured Goods Down

* Farm Machinery Up… and Textile, Plastics, and Metal Stamping Machinery Down

* Commercial Greenhouses Up… and Urban Office Buildings Down

Depending on how deep the industrial recession gets, and how much travel is curtailed, we might even see oil and gasoline prices come down to pre-2005 levels. (Of course, if the US Dollar Index slips substantially, then oil prices will remain high since most oil is imported, and less of it will be denominated in US Dollars in the coming years.)

3.) Lower Interest Rates (Within Limits), Then Depression

Picture outcome #2 (above) only worse. The recession doesn’t end. It only gets worse. Corporate layoffs escalate to the point where 30% or more of American workers are out of work. Lower interest rates, loan guarantees, and government job programs are ineffective. The stock market keeps going down. The dollar continues to lose buying power versus foreign currencies. Coastal real estate remains in the doldrums. After three or four years, the anchormen on news networks stop calling it a recession. They call it what it is: a Depression. Similar in some way to the Great Depression, they might call it The Greater Depression. It could last from 5 to 20 years. Likelihood for this outcome: 20%.

3A.) The Cure Worse Than the Disease: HRC Channels FDR

If Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) is enthroned in the midst of a deep recession or a depression, I predict that in partnership with the Democrat party-controlled congress she will take the typical New Deal Democrat approach, and begin a massive round of Federal spending to help “revive” the economy. Channeling the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (or should I say Eleanor Roosevelt, who really ran the show), HRC’s answer will be to throw money at the problem: A whole raft of new “Alphabet Soup” agencies, wage and price controls, currency changes, pork barrel road projects far and wide, massive expansion of Federal job programs, more welfare, you name it—more, more, more government spending.

4.) Global Depression and World War III

Everyone know that if you buy a car on credit and you stop making your payments, the bank sends someone to tow your car away. Nation states do the same thing. I call it kingdom towing. Most people just call it war. In the event of a major Depression, the chance of war will increase dramatically, either because of perceived vulnerability, or because politicians will see wartime spending and national resolve as a means to rouse a dormant economy. Likelihood for this outcome: 10%

5.) Worst Case: Depression, Hyperinflation and Total Socioeconomic Collapse

The Depression and inflation are so severe that law and order completely breaks down and long distance commerce ceases. You’ve read about it before in SurvivalBlog and in my books, so I don’t need to explain it here. Likelihood for this outcome: 2%.

Conclusion
Again, I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball. Take all of the foregoing as educated guesswork. Formulate your own pet scenario and extrapolate outcomes. But above all, be prepared. Tailor your preparations for your climate zone and for the population density and water availability in your area. Quit hesitating. If you have the means to do so, move to a lightly populated retreat area. Even if you decide to stay in the suburbs, get your beans, bullets, and Band-Aids squared away, muy pronto.



Letter Re: How to Make Old Fashioned Homemade Soap

Mr Rawles,

I’m looking forward to trying Grandpappy’s wood ash soap making technique. I’ve tried it before, but unfortunately only was only successful once. I might add, although unavailable as Red Devil brand in the grocery stores, lye is easily available from online soap making and chemical supplies. [JWR Adds: It is also available via mail order from Lehman’s–one of our Affiliate advertisers.] Another source, if you live in oilfield country, is to find a friend who works on a[n oil] rig. They get it in 50 pound bags and it’s pure and fine for soap making, hominy making or other uses. It comes well packaged in double plastic lined bags and stores well loose in a 5 gallon bucket (the kind with a [rubber] lid seal) lined with a plastic bag. It’s quite hygroscopic, so you need to be careful in humid weather that the bag is tied and the lid is sealed. – Judy B



Letter Re: Honey Prices Escalating, Just as Predicted

Jim:
Several months ago, I e-mailed you and the others on the blog about bulk honey prices going up. They stabilized at $7.99 for a 96 liquid ounce jug of Silverbow brand honey at Costco for many months. Two weeks ago, a jug of honey was $7.99. As of today, the same jug is $8.79, a 90 cent price increase. I put out some questions as to why the price increase and all I am hearing is minor costs due to dwindling honey supplies (as was discussed in SurvivalBlog) but [also] a greater [wholesale] cost due to transportation costs as well as other business costs such as wages, labor, etc. I’m hoping more blog readers can give some input.

As it stands, the very same honey I bought last year for $7.49 is already paying off. – MP in Seattle (a 10 Cent Challenge subscriber)

JWR Replies: Ah, yes, The Alpha Strategy, proven right, once again.



Odds ‘n Sods:

By way of SHTF Daily: Bernanke fears economy will hit a brick wall

  o o o

I just heard that Gun Parts Guy (one of our loyal advertisers) now offers metric FN-FAL parts kits (sans receivers) complete with US Section 922(r) compliance parts, in a wide variety of configurations. FAL parts kits are getting scarce in the U.S., so stock up. When you order, please mention that you saw the kits mentioned in SurvivalBlog.

   o o o

More from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Top Swiss banker attacks US lending standards as ‘unbelievable’

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“The most important factor in the survival equation is you: Your physical health and your cast of mind–particularly the way in which you handle stress.” – Mel Tappan, Tappan on Survival



Note from JWR:

If you value what you read in SurvivalBlog, then please consider becoming a 10 Cent Challenge subscriber. These subscriptions are entirely voluntary, but greatly appreciated. They help pay the bills here, including our bandwidth costs, which increase increase steadily as the readership grows. (In August of ’05–the month that we launched–we had 9,377 unique visits and used 6.9 used gigabytes of bandwidth. In August of ’06 we had 87,117 unique visits and used 24 gigabytes of bandwidth. In August of ’07 we expect about 158,500 unique visits, and we’ll use about 82 gigabytes of bandwidth.)



How to Make Old Fashioned Homemade Soap (Part 3 of 3), by Grandpappy

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
How to Render (Melt) Animal Fat:
Beef fat is called tallow and pig fat is called lard. Poultry fat is too soft to be used by itself, but it may be used in a ratio of about 10% with tallow or a tallow-lard combination. Bear fat may also be used but it must be melted (rendered) quickly after the bear has been killed because bear fat will quickly become rancid. You may also use the fat from farm animals such as sheep or goats, and a variety of wild animals, such as beaver, opossum, raccoon, and groundhog. If there is any lean meat still attached to the fat, cut it off and make sure you only use the fat to make grease.
Melting animal fat is called rendering. Rendering should be done outdoors or in a well ventilated area. The smell of melting animal fat will make most people nauseous. Cut the animal fat into small pieces about one-inch cubed and put them into a pot with about 1/8 inch of rainwater and cook over low to medium heat. Gradually add the fat to the pot and stir to keep the hot grease and solid pieces of fat circulating. As you stir be sure to scrape the bottom of the pot to prevent any fat from sticking to the bottom and burning. Do not burn the fat or allow it to smoke. If it starts to smoke then you are applying too much heat and you are burning the fat or grease.
One pound of fat will yield about 2.25 cups of grease. Most of the fat will melt into a liquid but some small solid particles will not melt and these are called cracklings. After melting the fat, allow it to cool slightly, and then strain it through a clean thin cloth and store it in a sealed container until it is needed. The cracklings will be on the top surface of the straining cloth. Save the delicious cracklings for use in other cooking recipes.
(Note: Raw animal fat can quickly become rancid. Therefore raw animal fat should not be saved and then converted into grease at some future date. The best procedure is to render animal fat into grease while the fat is still fresh. Rendered animal fat has a much longer storage life than raw animal fat.)
(Note: You can also reclaim bacon grease (pork lard), hamburger grease (beef tallow), and other used cooking greases for soap making purposes. The basic instructions are on my web site at: How to Clarify Used Cooking Grease.)

How to Make Concentrated Brown Lye Water:
You will need rainwater (or steam distilled water) and the cold ashes from any hardwood fire, such as oak, hickory, maple, ash, beech, or old fruit trees. Do not use the ashes from a fire that burned pine tree wood.
The cold ashes from any hardwood fire can be converted into lye. Lye made from fire ashes is not as caustic as commercially purchased lye. Any large wooden, plastic, or clay container may be used, such as a huge flower pot. A deep container is better than a wide container. The container should have a hole in its bottom center and that is why a flower pot is perfect. Do not use a container made of tin or aluminum because lye is caustic and it will react with these materials. (Note: Or you could use a container with a side-mounted water valve, such as a 5-gallon water jug.)
For example, I use a clay flower pot that has a 9 inch outside diameter top, a 5.5 inch outside diameter bottom, and it is 9 inches tall, with sides and a bottom that is 0.25 inch thick. When packed with cold ashes to within 2.5 inches of its top, it holds approximately 145 cubic inches (about 10 cups) of tightly packed cold ashes. Ten cups of tightly packed cold ashes will yield one-gallon of average strength brown lye water. Tightly packed means the loose ashes were pressed down firmly into the cup. If you use a different size container, then you should do the math to determine how much average strength brown lye water you will get from your container.
Caution: Lye water is caustic and it will burn your skin. Be extremely careful and wear rubber gloves and wear goggles when handling lye water. If possible, lye water should be made outdoors.
Firmly pack a layer of straw, or brown pine needles, or sand about one-inch deep in the bottom of the container to help keep the ashes inside the container. Firmly pack cold ashes from any hardwood fire on top of the bottom layer. Slope the top surface of the ashes slightly from the sides of the container to its center to help direct the water flow to the center of the container. Tightly pack the ashes to within two to three inches of the top of the container, depending on the size of the container. This empty top space is necessary to receive and hold the hot rainwater when it is first poured into the top of the container.
Place the large container on top of concrete blocks, bricks, or any other type of support so a second smaller container (at least one-gallon or four-quarts) can be placed beneath the center of the upper pot to catch the brown lye water as it drips through the hole in the bottom of the upper pot.
Rainwater is the best water for making brown lye water because it is soft and it contains no minerals or chlorine. Several easy ways to collect large quantities of rainwater can be found on my web site at: How to Find Water and Make It Safe to Drink.
(Note: If you do not have access to rainwater, then you may use the steam distilled water sold at most grocery stores. Steam distilled water is chlorine and mineral free water. Instructions for making steam distilled water are also included in the above water article on my web site.)
Your objective is to make approximately one-gallon of brown lye water from one fresh batch of cold hardwood fire ashes. Heat about one-half gallon of rainwater to boiling and then slowly pour it over the ashes in the upper container. If the ashes were packed down firmly they should not be swimming or floating in water. While the rainwater gradually disappears into the ashes, heat another one-half gallon of rainwater and then slowly pour it over the ashes. Wait about one-hour and then heat another one-half gallon of rainwater and slowly pour it over the ashes. Wait about one-half hour. If your brown lye water container has about one-gallon of brown lye water then you may stop. If you do not yet have one-gallon of brown lye water, then heat another one-half gallon of rainwater and slowly pour it over the ashes. When you have finished you will have poured a total of approximately 1.5 to 2 gallons of hot rainwater into the pot of ashes. It may take a little while for the water to make its way through the ashes and out the hole in the bottom of the upper container. Be patient. The liquid that drips into the smaller container on the ground will be brown lye water. 1.5 to 2 gallons of hot rainwater will yield approximately one-gallon of brown lye water. (Note: The ashes will absorb and retain between one-half to one gallon of rainwater, depending on the size and shape of your container and how tightly you packed down the ashes in the container. Discard the used ashes after you have extracted one-gallon of brown lye water. If you need more brown lye water, then use a fresh batch of hardwood fire ashes to extract your next gallon of brown lye water.)
Wear rubber gloves and goggles when handling the brown lye water because it is caustic and it will burn your skin if it comes in contact with your skin. If you get some lye water on your skin, wash it off immediately with soap and water.
If necessary, the brown lye water can be stored in a safe container, such as a stainless steel pot with a lid, or a glass jar with a lid. However, the best procedure is to use the brown lye water immediately to make soap.
(Note: There are several different methods for testing the strength of the brown lye water but none of them are necessary. There is no reason to complicate the soap making process by attempting to get the brown lye water to a specific strength prior to using it to make soap. If your lye water is at the recommended average strength, then you will make a good all-purpose soap. However, if your lye water is a little stronger than average then you will produce a good laundry soap. If your lye water is a little weaker than average then you will produce a good bath soap. Therefore don’t be too concerned about the strength of your brown lye water. You will need both laundry soap and bath soap, and you will be making soap frequently if you are out of soap. Therefore you can tolerate a little variability in the strength of your brown lye water. Besides, you will be boiling off most of the brown water anyway before you use it to make your soap.)
(Note: Some recipes recommend that you pour the brown lye water through the same batch of ashes several times in order to increase the strength of the lye water. This procedure has marginal value. The first extraction of the lye from the ashes will remove most of the usable lye from the ashes. Trying to squeeze a little more lye out of ashes that have already been seriously depleted of their lye is just not practical. On the other hand, a single extraction of lye from each new set of ashes will yield brown lye water that is of approximately the same strength each time, and this will result in a more predictable soap making process that can be replicated over and over again. From a quality control perspective, this means the process will have less total variation and therefore it should yield a product that is more consistent from one batch to the next. When you have a consistent stable process, it is easier to fine tune the process and improve the quality of your finished product.)
There are three methods for making soap from the brown lye water as follows:
Method 1 – Brown Lye Water: Some soap making recipes recommend using the brown lye water in the same strength as it was originally created when the rainwater was poured through the ashes. This method requires a much larger soap making pot and it also adds several hours to the soap stirring process. This is the traditional method that was used in the 1800’s and it is the method that is still used today in many third-world countries. If you have a really, really old soap making recipe, then this is probably the method it describes. The major difficulty with this method is that it requires considerable skill and experience to consistently produce usable soap. Relatively minor mistakes or poor timing when using this method will result in a batch of nasty stuff that is neither soap nor anything else worth using. That is the reason this method was abandoned by our ancestors when commercial lye crystals became available at the local hardware and general store. Lye crystals significantly reduced the time required to make soap and they also yielded consistent batches of good usable soap.
Method 2 – Lye Crystals: Some modern soap making recipes recommend boiling down the brown lye water until nothing remains except lye crystals, and then saving the lye crystals in a safe container for future use. Later, when you want to make soap, you add the lye crystals to a little fresh rainwater and make fresh lye water. This method adds an unnecessary step to the soap making process and it does involve some danger when reconstituting the lye crystals into lye water. (Note: These homemade lye crystals are very similar to the lye crystals that were once widely available at most hardware and grocery stores. However, it is no longer possible to purchase lye crystals at the grocery store because they were withdrawn from the market because they were being used to make illegal drugs.)
Method 3 – Concentrated Brown Lye Water: This is the method I developed out of necessity, and it is much more practical than either of the above two methods. Boil one gallon of normal strength brown lye water down into 3/8 cup of concentrated brown lye water. If you boil the brown lye water down before you use it in a soap recipe, you can reduce the amount of time it takes to stir the soap mixture by several hours. This also simplifies the trial and error method of combining the lye water and the grease and it significantly reduces the possibility of making a failed batch of unusable soap. If you start with one-gallon (16 cups) of original strength brown lye water, then it usually takes between 3 to 4 hours to boil it down to 3/8 cup of concentrated brown lye water, depending on the amount of heat used. This means you will have reduced the subsequent old fashioned soap stirring procedure by at least 3 to 4 hours. As the water gradually boils away, the boiling process begins to proceed faster and faster because there is less water remaining in the pot. By the time the water is down to one-quart or less, it boils away very quickly so you will then need to watch it carefully to make sure you don’t boil off all your water. (Note: If you make a mistake and boil the one-gallon of brown lye water down into less than 3/8 cup of concentrated brown lye water, then wait until the concentrated brown lye water cools a little bit, and then add just enough rainwater to return the concentrated brown lye water to the 3/8 cup mark. Add the rainwater slowly and be careful because the mixture may sputter a little bit.)
(Final Note: The Grandpappy’s Homemade Soap Recipe that I developed through trial and error specifies the use of the concentrated brown lye water made by following Method 3 above. However, as mentioned previously, most really old soap making recipes recommend putting the brown lye water and grease into a big pot and cooking it over a big fire for several hours and stirring it while it cooked. The reason for the big fire was because they were using original strength brown lye water that contained too much water to make soap. Therefore they had to boil the water off and this frequently resulted in a failed batch of soap, or a batch of soap that was gritty, lye heavy, and of very poor quality. If you follow my Grandpappy’s Homemade Soap Recipe at the beginning of this article, you will notice that it is not necessary to cook the soap mixture. The reason is because the brown lye water has already been boiled down to the correct ratio of water to grease using Method 3 above. If a person does not know about Method 3 then he or she will probably invest a lot of time and energy in a multitude of unsuccessful attempts to make soap, and repeat the very same mistakes our ancestors did in the 1800’s before the invention and sale of commercial lye crystals.)

SUMMARY:
A brief summary of the most important critical information from “Grandpappy’s Homemade Soap Recipe” is as follows:
A. Boiled rainwater poured through ten cups of tightly packed ashes from a hardwood fire will yield one gallon of average strength brown lye water.
B. One gallon of average strength brown lye water should be boiled down to 3/8 cup of concentrated brown lye water.
C. 3/4 cup of concentrated brown lye water should be mixed with 2 cups of warm grease which was made from melting (rendering) almost any type of animal fat.
D. When stirred the lye and grease will combine together in a chemical reaction to make soap. This normally takes between 30 minutes to 3 hours. The soap mixture must be kept above the melting point of the type of animal fat you are using.
E. When the soap mixture traces, pour it into a mold and let it rest for one to seven days, depending on the type of animal fat or oil used. Then remove the soap from the soap mold.
F. Air dry the soap for another 2 to 6 weeks. The chemical reaction will then be 100% complete and all the lye and grease will be gone. The lye and grease will have been converted into homemade soap.
The major contributions this article adds to the body of knowledge about soap making are items A, B, and C above. Items D, E, and F can be found in any good soap making book and at a variety of Internet web sites, with both minor and major variations.

CONCLUSION:
Knowing how to consistently and successfully make soap from rainwater, campfire ashes, and animal fat takes you one step closer to becoming an independent resourceful human being in God’s natural order of things.



Letter Re: Advice on Construction a Hiding Place for Precious Metals in a Home

Jim,
After being scared Schumerless by the potential US economy meltdown and reading various related posts on SurvivalBlog, I finally took the plunge and purchased some junk silver coins. Since I plan to store these at home rather than a bank safe deposit box (because of potential accessibility problems), would you please recommend a strategy for storage. I’m assuming a small, somewhat hidden, safe bolted to the floor/wall would be reasonable. Any recommendations? Thanks, – Russ S.

JWR Replies: Unless you already own a large home vault–such as a gun vault–I recommend that you construct one or more secret caches in your house. If the weight is modest, you can simply hide a bag or box of silver coins under the insulation in your attic. Keep in mind that it will probably be resting on top of horizontal ceiling sheetrock, so keep the weight under 15 pounds!

To conceal up to 200 pounds of silver, you can make a Rawles “Through The Looking Glass” Wall/Door Cache. Even someone with just rudimentary skills can make one of these “between the studs” wall caches. These are simple to construct, and will go un-noticed by all but the most astute and methodical burglars. Here is how even someone inexperienced with carpentry can do so, in typical North American wood frame houses–with modern sheetrocked walls: Pick out a section of sheetrocked interior partition wall in a bedroom where a wall-mounted mirror wouldn’t look out of place. Go to your local home “Big Box” store such as Home Depot or Lowe’s and buy a vertical mirror that is at least 16 inches wide, and 4+ feet tall. (Ideally, you should get one that is the the same width as your wall’s stud interval, so that the mirror mounting screws will attached the sheetrock into the studs. Such mirrors typically come with a set of L-shaped mounting clips that attach to a wall or door with screws. Figure out where any wiring might be running through the wall. Typically it will run horizontally, about 1 foot up from the floor, parallel with your power outlets. Do not pick a section of wall that is near a light switch, since vertical wires may be running though those wall sections. Plan to mount mirror at least 6 inches above the wiring. Look for small indentations, puckers, or other signs of nails attaching the sheetrock. These will typically be centered either 18″ or 24″ apart. If you can’t spot the nails or screws you can either buy or borrow an inexpensive magnetic stud finder–a little magnet-on-a-pivot gizmo that reacts when you pass it over a nail head or drywall screw head. (A bit of judicious tapping to hear pitch changes can also be helpful.) The nails will be driven into vertical studs, and it is between two 2″x4″ studs that you will cut your cache hole. It will provide you a caching space that is about 15″ wide and 3-1/2″ deep.

Once you’ve estimated where the studs are, drill some small exploratory holes in the sheetrock, at a sharp angle. Probe inside the hole with a length of coat hanger wire to confirm where the vertical studs are located, and whether or not there are any horizontal 2″x4″ fire stop blocks. (Those are typically half way up each wall.) Then, with a power jig saw or a SawzAll, cut a hole (or holes) to provide access to the wall cache dead space. Leave at least 2 inches of sheetrock width around the hole that will be covered by the mirror. Remove any insulation from the cache area, and vacuum out the sheetrock dust. Place your valuables in the cache. If there is substantial weight, do not rest it directly on top of any wiring at the bottom of the cache. (You should first cut a support block out of 2×4 block and screw it in place with drywall screws.) Then neatly mount the mirror over the hole, measuring carefully and/or using a level so that the mirror will be mounted straight up and down. Accessing the cache will just take a few minutes to remove the mirror mounting screws. (Or about 10 seconds (rip!) with a claw hammer if you need to Get Out of Dodge in a real hurry.) If you need to access the cache frequently, you’ll find that if the screws are screwed only into sheetrock and not into studs behind, then the screw holes in the sheetrock will become enlarged and the screws will eventually loosen. If that happens, you can install anchor bolts behind most of the screws. (Remember, I mentioned leaving at least a 2 inch overlap. You will need that width of sheetrock to support the anchor bolts.) Oh, by the way, the same technique can be used to created a similar–albeit more shallow–cache inside a hollow core bedroom door. One neat trick with a door cache is to only remove the top mirror mounting brackets when you access the cache. With those removed and the door slightly open you can simply slide the mirror up to reveal the cache opening.



Odds ‘n Sods:

The next WRSA shoot is in Douglas,Wyoming, this weekend (August 25-26.). Don’t miss this opportunity for some great rifle training at a very reasonable price!

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Frequent content contributor DAV mentioned this article: Panic in U.S. money markets! by Marty Weiss and Mike Larson.

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We read that Counrtywide Home Loans is having “difficulties.” I predict that lots of other home mortgage lenders will face similar “difficulties” in the near future. In a year, many of them will be history. As I’ve said before, the only folks in the real estate industry that hat will fare well in the next few years will be foreclosure specialists.